


lacuna

by wollfgang



Series: Tumblr Prompt Fics [20]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Happy Ending, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, don't worry they are soulmates, like how could they be anything else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23880364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wollfgang/pseuds/wollfgang
Summary: His Soulmark is nothing like hers. It's…beautiful. The font is perfectly even, delicate but strong, running down the tender inner skin of Lucifer’s arm just a shade lighter than scar tissue. There’s a jealousy that flickers in her chest, one that she wishes didn’t exist, one that is angry that he’s marked so clearly, so legibly. She could onlywishto have such a simple and clear mark. Her Soulmark had caused her nothing but heartache until she made the decision to push it away. Lucifer could find his other half, if he wanted to. All it would take is the right person speaking the right word.Unthinking, she reaches out to touch. A social faux pas of the highest order, but Lucifer doesn’t recoil. Her heart is breaking because at least before when he was Blank, even though he couldn’t match with her, at least he wasn’t going to match withanyone. But now- Chloe isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. Lucifer just allows her to brush the tips of her fingers against the brand like it’s nothing, like it’s of no consequence for her to reach out for the mark that matches him to another. To someone else. Someone that wasn’ther.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Series: Tumblr Prompt Fics [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/803880
Comments: 99
Kudos: 854





	lacuna

**Author's Note:**

> crossposted to ao3 upon request :)  
> prompt: soulmate au

Lucifer is late. 

Not that his tardiness is particularly unusual. He tends to sweep into the precinct closer to noon most days, unless they're on a case. He probably partied too much the night before. Except the hours creep by and he still doesn’t show. She sends him a text. Then a call that rings and rolls over to voicemail. Maybe he decided not to come in after all? Usually, he gives her some notice, even if she'd rather not hear about a weekend long orgy. 

She hums to herself. Perhaps she will swing by Lux on the way home to check on him. He’d stopped freaking out about his ‘mother’ for a few weeks, settled into a stretch of calm. Chloe should have known the normalcy wouldn’t last.

Lucifer is _manic_ when he finally comes in. The work day is nearly over, the golden slant of evening stretching across the floor from the windows. He's missing his suit jacket, smells of sharp whiskey and sweat. Dark curls whorl free, from his mussing or lack of product. He practically collapses into the seat next to her desk and stares off into space.

“Everything okay?” she asks. She’d laugh at the short reprieve between dramas, if he didn’t look so miserable.

“No,” he says, hoarse. His eyes are red, as if he'd been weeping. 

Any humor she might have possessed vanishes. “What’s wrong?”

He doesn’t say anything, but merely begins undoing the cuff links on his left arm. She stares, uncomprehending, as he scandalously rolls his sleeve up to reveal pale, angular print spelling out a single word.

 _Miracle_.

“What…?” she breathes.

A Soulmark.

But Lucifer was Blank. They both knew it. He’d revealed every single inch of his skin for her, once upon a time, in a display of equal opportunity ogling. The only marring of his form were the two large swathes of scarring at his back. No Soulmark.

His Soulmark is nothing like hers. It's…beautiful. The font is perfectly even—delicate but strong—running down the tender inner skin of Lucifer’s arm in a shade lighter than scar tissue. Jealousy flickers in her chest, unwanted. A curdling anger that he’s marked so clearly, so legibly. She could only _dream_ to have such a simple and clear mark. Her Soulmark has caused her nothing but heartache, until she made the decision to push it away.

Chloe’s mark is broken. Always has been. Jagged, uneven strikes. It’s fine, it doesn’t bother her anymore. Sure, when she was younger the other kids would make fun of it, but Chloe Decker learned from her Pops to swing first and swing hard. Now, it's easier to keep it hidden under bracers or sleeves. 

(When Chloe was sixteen, she went to the Soulmark Center. They couldn’t tell her much beyond that it _appeared_ to be a language, given the structure and pattern, and that it held some resemblance to the clay impressions of Aramaic or Assyrian, but not of any dialect on record. An anomaly. With no ability to read or translate what it says, it might as well have been random lines, for all the good it does.)

But Lucifer could find his other half, if he wanted to. All it would take is the right person speaking the right word. Simple. 

Things were better. Before, when he was Blank. The thought is selfish, but it wells up hot and furious. Even though he couldn’t match with her, at least he wasn’t going to match with _anyone_. But now...Chloe isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.

Unthinking, she reaches out to touch his Soulmark. A social faux pas of the highest order, but Lucifer doesn’t recoil. Lucifer allows her to brush the tips of her fingers against the brand like it’s nothing, like it’s of no consequence for her to reach out for the mark that matches him to another. To someone else. Someone that wasn’t _her_.

She feels sick. 

“I think dear ol' dad is just taking the piss out of me.” Lucifer’s voice cuts through her fog and she snatches her hand back like she’d been burned. 

“Why’s that?” she manages.

“It would take a miracle to love the devil,” he says, mouth bitter. “It’s just one big, cosmic joke. That I could be marked someone else when I-” he bites his words off.

“Lucifer-” she starts, but he pulls his arm back towards himself, hastily begins yanking his sleeve back, refastening the cuff. 

“It’s fine,” he says, sharp. She flinches back a little and he immediately looks apologetic. “Forgive me, Detective. I shouldn’t have- I shouldn’t have come in. I'm in no state for conversation, let alone investigation.”

Chloe swallows back her hurt. Takes the smallest moment to put on a brave face. How many times has she said those same words about her own Soulmark? _It's fine._ No matter that her heart is breaking right now, Lucifer is her friend. He needs her. “Have you talked to Linda about this?”

His jaw clenches. “Yes.” The confirmation is clipped and tight.

Sympathy squeezes her chest like a vice. “I take it that it didn’t go well.”

“Not at all. She seems to think that it’s a good thing. That some poor sod is tied to a bastard like me. That I am once again at the whims of some amorphous force, marked against my will." His voice grows louder, angrier. “That my own feelings have no consideration upon this metaphysical connection, as if I have any desire to seek out this unknown individual out when I have all that I want right here.” He makes a derisive sound in his throat. “A good thing,” he mutters sarcastically.

“It’s…conventionally thought of as a good thing.” Chloe treads carefully. Although, in her personal experience, it hasn't been.

His gaze swivels to her, doing that thing where he seems to be able to see inside her, past all of the walls, to who she is at heart. “But you don’t,” he adds. "You don't think it is."

“No,” she answers him honestly, because they’re honest with each other, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. “I don’t.” She's never thought positively about the Soulmarks as a whole, as a concept. Not when she would never be privy to the certainty of finding someone meant for her. Not when she would always be on the outside looking in. 

His eyes fall to her bracer, LAPD issued, that covers her arm from wrist to elbow. He’s had the opportunity to see her Soulmark before. There were moments he’s caught her unawares or at home where she doesn’t always bother to cover it, but he’s never looked. Oddly respectful of her clear avoidance of the subject for a man with no sense of propriety

“You don’t have to do anything about it, Lucifer. You’re not- you’re not beholden to whoever is on the other side of that mark. You can be with whoever you want. Or no one at all.” It’s not much reassurance, but it’s all she can offer him, even as she heart crumbles. It’s all that she’s been able to hold onto herself.

He’s quiet for a long while. “It’s not Daniel, is it?” he asks, nodding at her arm. 

She pulls a little closer to herself. “No.” 

Lucifer nods. "I'm sorry."

She does her best to muster up a smile. "Thank you, but, really, it's fine." She cuts off the instinctive, _"It doesn't bother me."_

She’d wanted that connection with the person on the other end so badly, once upon a time, but gave it up a long time ago. She knew that whatever glitch in the system rendered her Soulmark as a mistaken collection of jagged lines made finding her match, if they even existed, nigh impossible. She doesn’t regret her relationship with Dan, even if it didn’t work out. She knows why, now. Their split had nothing to do with the fact they weren’t Soulmates, but the dishonesty, the lack of trust, that did them in. Or, at least, that’s what she tells herself. Sometimes she can’t help but wonder if things might have been different if they had been matched.

She used to hope that Dan was her match, that she’d look down and her strange, mangled mark would be dark, fulfilled. After they separated, she was grateful that it remained white. She’s found herself wishing again, lately, despite all her attempts to the contrary, of a different voice, accented and low, speaking her mark. But such fantasy is an exercise in futility and she knows it. One can't speak a distorted bar-code.

Abruptly, Chloe gets to her feet. “Come on,” she commands. He stands, doesn’t resist when she tugs his wrist and pulls him along. If Lucifer is going to be miserable and unmatched, at least they can be miserable and unmatched together.

“My my, Detective,” he plays at flirtation when she drags him into a file room and locks the door, but it falls flat. She starts unbuckling her bracer before she loses her courage. “Det- Chloe,” he says, sounding panicked. 

“You showed me yours, I’ll show you mine. Tit for tat, right?” she says. “Mine’s broken anyway. It’s fine. It doesn’t bother me anymore.” An oft repeated refrain.

“Broken?” he asks, surprised.

“It’s just random lines, doesn’t even mean anything-” she pulls the bracer free. “See?”

Lucifer goes stock still. 

Slowly his hands move, one to cradle her elbow and the other to hover over the series of white lines of varying thickness and angle that crosshatch her skin. He takes so long to say anything that old nerves begin to bubble up. “Listen, I know it’s weird, but-”

“It’s my name.”

Her head jerks up, but he’s looking at her arm, his face unreadable. “What?” 

“It’s my name.” His fingers trace the series of oddly spaced lines. “Light Bringer, Star of the Morning. In the Celestial Tongue.”

“That’s not funny,” she snaps, attempting to tug her arm free from his grip, but it’s like pulling against iron. 

He speaks, something sibilant and back in the throat and it feels like someone’s reached inside to the fibers of her being and _pulled._ Her arm burns as the mark fills in, shifting from pearlescent to the deep, rich black of a spoken Soulmark.

Oh. Lucifer is…Lucifer is her match. Her Soulmate. She can’t seem to steady her breathing. Blood rushes in her head. This was the last thing she expected. She’d wanted, she’d _hoped_ \- but not expected.

“Chloe, I’m so sorry,” he says, like he’s in agony. Her gaze snap up to his. “I didn’t- _Bloody_ buggering Hell. It doesn’t have to mean anything,” he tells her, eyes almost feverish with intensity. “Like you said, you’re not beholden to this. You don’t owe me anything.” He lets go of her. The space between them feels like a slap.

“It’s your name?” Her ears are ringing. His name. _Lucifer’s_. After all this time. Tears burn at the back of her eyes. 

She reaches for him again, snatching at his wrist. The cufflink breaks, part of it skittering across the floor and vanishing. _Miracle_ was more ambiguous than a name, but if it’s possible, she has to know. She _has_ to. 

“Chloe-” he protests, but doesn’t stop her as she unveils his mark again, pallid and unmistakable. 

“ _Please_ ,” she says, something desperate in her tone halting him. “Please, let me try. Let me at least know.”

He swallows and eventually nods. 

“Am I your _Miracle_?” she asks, softly, watching his face. He jolts, gasping softly, eyelashes fluttering. Black spreads across his arm, filling in the letters, like ink to wet paper. Chloe’s heart pounds hard against her ribs. 

They stand there a moment, gripping each other, before Chloe darts up to kiss him. He resists for a moment, just long enough that Chloe begins to pull back, rejection just beginning to sting behind her eyes, when he chases after her, kissing her in earnest until she’s pressed against a filing cabinet, Lucifer’s hips bracketed to hers. She moans, just a little, at the press of his body.

"Chloe," he gasps between kisses. _"Chloe."_

“ _God_ , Lucifer, when I thought your mark was for someone else…” she confesses when they part, still staying close, sharing air. She can’t form it into words. But his mark is _hers_ and that can’t be taken away.

But she will never hold him against his will, Soulmate or not. It would…it would be anathema to who Lucifer is, the man she loves, to try and pin him down because of this. She licks her lips and forces herself to say the words that need to be said. “I know you never wanted this-”

He presses his forehead to hers. “I didn’t know it would- that it was _you_. Chloe.”

“I want it to mean something,” she tells him breathlessly. “Is that okay?” she asks, searching his face. "If you want to forget this whole thing, I’ll understand.” _She_ won’t forget, but she’ll understand.

“No,” he refutes. His eyes are unwavering. “I want this with you. Whatever it is. If it were anyone else...”

Her grip on him tightens. “We’ll figure it out. It doesn’t have to be anything we don’t want it to be.” Their Soulmarks will be what they make of them, of that, Chloe is certain. She bumps her nose against his, hovering near his mouth. “ _Light Bringer, Star of the Morning_.” 

He shivers, just a little. Laughs under his breath. ” _Miracle_. Of course, it was you. It had to be you.” Then he presses another kiss to her lips.


End file.
